Thread by @MXS_Nightmare

Much of the gold stolen by the Nazis from Jews & others, then hidden during the end of World War Two, was presumably lost & never officially recovered.

"Raubgold", i.e. "robbery gold" or "rape gold", is the German colloquialism for metals thus seized.

google.com/amp/s/www.stut…

Versunkene Schätze in Deutschland
Der Goldschatz der Nazis

Von Markus Brauer 03. August 2018 - 07:00 Uhr

"Sunken treasures in Germany

The gold treasure of the Nazis

By Markus Brauer 03. August 2018 - 07:00 o'clock"

"Before & during World War 2, the National Socialists robbed invaluable assets - money, gold, paintings. This robbery gold is not the only treasure in Germany around which myths are entwined."

"...Ostensibly, raubgold has been shipped via U-Boat to Argentina..."

Secret Nazi hideout believed found in remote Argentine jungle

By Terrence McCoy
March 23, 2015

Archaeologists found ruins deep in the Argentine jungle that could have been built as a safe haven for Nazis fleeing Germany. (Reuters)

washingtonpost.com/news/morning-m…

"They called them “ratlines.”

In the final days of the Third Reich, when its demise was imminent, adherents realized that if they didn’t escape they would go down with it.

So they devised a system of escape — ratlines — that funneled thousands of war criminals through Spain..."

"...Abetted by Third Reich sympathizers, many swarmed into South America, beginning new lives from Brazil to Argentina.

Argentina is now where myths, rumors and historical facts of that time collide.

The stories say Nazis arrived by rubber dinghies off the coast of Patagonia.."

"The stories say crates of Nazi gold hit the beaches, then vanished into the foggy Andes Mountains. The stories say Hitler himself found new life in an Argentine idyll, “doddering peacefully in the Andean foothills attended by faithful Nazi servants.”"

Omfg.

Re: the crates, that is, not human smuggling. Although anything is possible, I suppose.

The submarines probably came in handy to those vermin. Grey rafts, that would be ship's lifeboats.

}:(

*Spit*

You know what's really sick?

The naval troops before Hitler started losing, 65% mortality rate on virgin voyage in those Uboats. The ones approaching Allied territories.

But during the ratline times, the SS officers and their friends & bribers etc got to commandeer the Uboats..

News › Europe

U-Boat rumoured to have helped Nazis escape to Argentina is discovered

"German submarine U-3523 might have been the perfect vehicle for getting Nazi loot & leaders to South America; its wreck has been found off the coast of Denmark.."

google.com/amp/s/www.inde…

[ a Nazi Red October??? ]

Adam Lusher

Thursday 19 April 2018 16:00

"A submarine linked to rumours that Adolf Hitler survived and escaped to Argentina in a U-boat has been discovered – lying wrecked at the bottom of the North Sea between Denmark and Norway."

"Submarine U-3523 had been one of a new generation of type XXI U-boats that were able to run more silently and stay submerged for longer than any of their predecessor, with a range that would have allowed them to sail non-stop from Europe to South America."

!!!!!!!!!!!

"As such it would have been perfect escape vessel for Nazi gold, high-ranking officials or even Hitler himself as the Reich collapsed at the end of the Second World War."

"And although the British crew of a B24 Liberator bomber reported sinking the sub on May 6 1945, its wreck was never found, helping support suspicions that the U-boat, and whoever it was carrying, might have got away to Argentina."

"Now, however, researchers from the Sea War Museum Jutland, Denmark, say they have discovered the wreck of U-3523 in the Skagerrak strait, ten nautical miles north of the north Danish town of Skagen."

"The discovery seems to prove that U-3523 never took Hitler, any Nazis or any treasure to Argentina.

The real reason it lay undiscovered for 73 years, the researchers say, is because the Liberator bomber crew made a mistake in reporting its position... nine nautical miles east."

"“After the war, there were many rumours about top Nazis who fled in U-boats and brought Nazi gold to safety, and the U-3523 fed the rumours.

“The Type XXI was the first genuine submarine that could sail submerged for a prolonged time; U-3523 had a range incl. South America."

"The Odessa File is a thriller by Frederick Forsyth (1972), about the adventures of a young German reporter attempting to discover the location of a former SS concentration-camp commander.

ODESSA: acronym; "Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen"

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Odess…

"In November 1963, shortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Peter Miller, a German freelance crime reporter, follows an ambulance to the apartment of Salomon Tauber, a Holocaust survivor who has committed suicide.

Miller is given the dead man's diary by policeman."

The book "brought about the exposure of the real-life "Butcher of Riga", Eduard Roschmann.

After the film was released to the public, he was arrested by the Argentinian police, skipped bail, and fled to Asunción, Paraguay where he died 10 August 1977."

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduard_Ro…

"Shadow Divers (published in 2004) is a non-fictional book by Robert Kurson recounting of the discovery of a World War II German U-boat 60 miles (97 km) off the coast of New Jersey, United States in 1991."

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_Di…

"divers make pact to keep U-Boat secret until they can discover its identity and claim credit for its discovery.
This is to prevent "wreck-jumping" (wherein another person claims credit and/or removes objects from the wreck).
Unfortunately, this pact is broken almost immediately"

Sadly, other wreckages run the risk of being intercepted by groups or states uncaring of the fact that such sites are protected as war memorials, and such actors may loot the gold without citing the location or origin of the wreckages.

This prevents rightful heirs from recovery.

Not only through the ocean, over the Andes, but underground:

SS & Projekt Riese

"Nazi Underground

Is treasure buried beneath mountains of Poland?"

Jake Halpern
May 2, 2016

"There are so many tunnels, who knows what else is there,”

-Tomasz Jurek

google.com/amp/s/www.newy…

"The Riese complex of tunnels and chambers covers almost two hundred thousand square metres, an area forty times as large as the White House. Treasure hunters have found Nazi artifacts... in the area."

"...Enormous tunnel—sixteen feet high and eighteen feet wide..."

"The tunnel continued into the murky distance, almost as far as I could see. It was an unexpected and breathtaking sight—and, as it turns out, just a small portion of the “underground city” that Tomasz Jurek had described."

"Leopold began walking quickly down the tunnel, his footsteps echoing. I followed. What, exactly, I asked, were the Nazis building here? Leopold nodded thoughtfully. “That is the mystery,” he said.""

"Starting in 1943, the Nazis began building a series of underground bunkers beneath the Góry Sowie, or Owl Mountains, in Lower Silesia. There were 7 facilities, including one beneath Książ Castle. Historians believe that the Nazis intended to connect the facilities with tunnels."

"Some treasure hunters, incl Tomasz Jurek, insist tunnels were completed then sealed off by the German military in last days of the war. These underground lairs, known collectively by code name Riese—“giant,” in German— were one of the Third Reich’s most ambitious undertakings."

"German historian Franz W. Seidler's book, “Hitler’s Secret Headquarters”: “The enormous scale of this project defies the imagination.”

Total floor space of the facilities exceeded 190,000 square metres, which is almost forty times as large as the White House."

"The project’s engineers estimated that it would take 6.3 million workdays to complete. Albert Speer, the Third Reich’s Minister of Armaments and Munitions, wrote, in his memoirs, that Hitler and other Nazi leaders were worried about their survival “to an insane degree.”"

"While Riese was being built, some 4,000 S.S. men guarded its perimeter, told to shoot any strangers who approached.

As the war ended, the Nazis were determined to keep information about the project from falling into the hands of the Russians & likely destroyed their records..."

"Seidler, in his book, notes that for decades suspicions have lingered about “the real reason behind the existence of Riese.”

Clues were everywhere—collapsed cave entrances, railroad tracks leading to abandoned worksites in the mountains, shafts built into the forest floor."

"...if Herbert Klose needed somewhere to hide his treasure chests, perhaps even an entire train, the tunnels of Riese would be a natural place to stash them. Without a master plan to consult, no one knew where all the tunnels began & ended, or how far and how deep they went."

"Jurek’s biggest concern, and Boczek’s, was being followed. Both worried that they were being watched by a gang of clandestine agents known as “the guards.”

Piotr Koper, the man who claimed to have found the train at the 65th Kilometre, said he feared for his family's safety."

"There is extensive mythology around the guards. By accounts, they are a global network of... Nazis, similar to the legendary odessa unit. Odessa was founded at the end of the war in order to help former S.S. members avoid capture & escape to countries like Argentina and Brazil."

"Boczek conceded that most of the original guards were likely dead, but he suspects that their secrets have been passed along to subsequent generations, who have been charged with watching over the old homeland and its buried treasures."

"...“I cannot tell you more.”..."

On Edgar Allan Poe:

"In July 1841, Poe published "A Few Words on Secret Writing" and, realizing the interest in the topic, wrote "The Gold-Bug" as one of the few pieces of literature to incorporate ciphers as part of the story."

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gold-…

""The Gold-Bug" inspired Robert Louis Stevenson in his novel about treasure-hunting, Treasure Island (1883).

Stevenson acknowledged this influence: "I broke into the gallery of Mr. Poe... No doubt the skeleton [in my novel] is conveyed from Poe.""

-Wikipedia

Circa World War 1

"There was no escape if something went wrong on a submerged U-boat... no diving gear on board if it sank. Even if sailors managed to overcome the water pressure and force open the hatch and get out, they almost certainly drowned."

M.S.

bbc.co.uk/guides/zq3q2hv

(I'm curious to find out how much cargo one of the later WW2 u-boat versions could carry, while still maintaining oxygen levels for the crew and ability to re-ascend; I'm also curious whether diplomats etc would have risked travel with such heavy cargo... i think not.)

(Imho, would have been a highly trusted skeleton crew overseeing gold transportation (unmarked cargo), like the sealed black casks on the train mentioned in the Riese article above; quite possibly they wouldn't know what they were xporting, maybe even scuttled.

Dips in dif boat)

"I want to make it clear that Hitler had no respect for the yellow metal, any more than he had for human life. Gold as a currency is built on trust, of which Hitler had none. He needed it to push forward his rearmament strategy."

Frank Holmes

google.com/amp/s/www.forb…

"So began the Reich’s looting of Europe’s gold reserves, beginning with Austria’s in 1938. At the time, Germany’s coffers were nearly empty. The infusion of Austria’s 90 to 100 metric tons of hard currency gave Hitler the boost he needed to continue his plundering."

Frank Holmes

"Today we remember the Nazi’s gold heist as “one of the greatest thefts by a government in history,” in the words of Ambassador and Undersecretary of Commerce Stuart E. Eizenstat, spoken during his 1997 hearing on the status of Holocaust assets."

"valued in the billions—seized"

"Millions more in silver, platinum, diamonds, artwork, other assets were stolen as well."

"Not every country’s hoard was pilfered, however. Once it was clear what the Nazis were up to, many outlying European countries had the prudence and foresight to secure their own reserves"

Between Operation Fish and the Ratlines, you gotta know that there's a lot of gold on the ocean floor today.

Holy shit.

:/

You oil dudes and naval experts out there, satellite gurus, you better be keeping an eye out for lil fleets of amphibious Japanese hoovers.

Wish I was kidding, lol

By the way. Whaling is a great cover for treasure hunting.

Cough cough. Same equipment.

Back to reality.
An old grudge of mine:

The Sinister Face of 'Neutrality'

The Role of Swiss Financial Institutions in the Plunder of European Jewry

(c) 1996 by Institute of the World Jewish Congress, Jerusalem. All Rights Reserved.

pbs.org/wgbh/pages/fro…

"Switzerland's reputation as a neutral safe-haven has been badly tarnished by recent revelations about its wartime transactions with Germany.

...Examination of the dormant bank accounts of Holocaust victims has [come to shed light on] Swiss financial dealings with the Nazis."

"Switzerland served as a repository for Jewish capital smuggled out of Nazi Germany & threatened states; vast amounts of gold, other valuables plundered from Jews & others...

...until the end of the war, Switzerland laundered hundreds of millions of dollars in stolen assets..."

Never Returned

" Holocaust survivors and the heirs of those who perished met an implacable wall of bureaucracy... Some of the dormant accounts were taken by Swiss authorities to satisfy claims of Swiss nationals with property seized by Communist regimes in East Central Europe."

"Among the most recent revelations is the fact that both the United States and the United Kingdom still retain looted gold recovered in Germany. Jewish groups and others have suggested that the gold be transferred for the benefit of Holocaust survivors.

..Pressure has mounted."

Omfg:

"It is well known that the Swiss vigorously blocked the entry of Jews attempting to flee Germany & occupied Eur. In 1938 (at suggestion Swiss Chief/Police Heinrich Rothmund) Bern requested that Berlin mark passports of Jews with a "J" - so that German Jews couldn't enter"

^Ok, to me, that shit up there is at least as sick as soldiers shooting.

Swiss bankers fucking conspired to accept Raubgold from Nazi Germany while at the same time denying entry to the fleeing Jews.

That should make anyone feel sick. What the fuck, Switzerland? ? :(

After skimming all of this, I feel a lot like the guy in Shadow Divers, when he picked up the German boot from the floor of his first U-boat, not realizing that part of the sailor's remains was still inside.

He realized at that moment that what he was doing was more than salvage

@threadreaderapp unroll please

This got way huge

Psalm 23:4,5a

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies"